Nation

looked away and mumbled something.
    “What did you say?” said Mau.
    “It’s not actually drawn here. It’s too small….”
    “ Small? What do you mean, small ?”
    “He’s right, Mau,” said Milo solemnly. “We didn’t want to tell you. It’s small. It’s a small island.”
    Mau’s mouth was open in astonished disbelief. “That can’t be right,” he protested. “It’s much bigger than any of the Windcatcher Islands.”
    “Islands that are even smaller,” said Pilu, “and there’s lots of them.”
    “Thousands,” said Milo. “It’s just that…well, as big islands go—”
    “—this is one of the smaller ones,” Pilu finished.
    “But the best one,” said Mau quickly. “And no one else has got the tree-climbing octopus!”
    “Absolutely,” said Pilu.
    “Just so long as we remember that. This is our home,” said Mau, standing up. He pulled at the trousers. “Aargh. These really itch! All I can say is trousermen don’t walk about much!”
    A sound made him look up, and there was the ghost girl—at least, it looked like the ghost girl. Behind her stood Cahle with a big grin, and the Unknown Woman, smiling her faint, faraway smile.
    Mau looked down at his trousers, and then up at her long hair with the flower in it, while she looked down at her toes and then up at his trousers, which were so much longer than his legs that he appeared to be standing in a pair of concertinas, and the captain’s hat floated on his curls like a ship at sea. She turned to look at Cahle, who stared up at the sky. He looked at Pilu, who looked down at his feet, although his shoulders were shaking.
    Then Mau and the ghost girl looked directly into each other’s eyes and there was only one thing they could do, which was to laugh themselves silly.
    The others joined in. Even the parrot squawked, “Show us yer drawers!” and did its doo-dahs on Ataba’s head.
    But Milo, who took things sensibly, and who happened to be facing the sea, stood up and pointed and said: “Sails.”

Diving for Gods

    I T RAINED GENTLY, FILLING the night with a rustling.
    Three more canoes, Mau thought, staring into the dark. Three all at once, sailing on the gentle wind.
    Now there were two babies and another coming soon, one little girl, one boy, eleven women including the ghost girl, and eight men not including Mau, who had no soul—and three dogs.
    He’d missed dogs. Dogs added something that even people didn’t, and one of the dogs was sitting by his feet, here in the darkness and the gentle rain. It wasn’t bothered much about the rain or what might be out there on the unseen sea, but Mau was a warm body moving about in a sleeping world and might at any moment do something that called for running around and barking. Occasionally it looked up at him adoringly and made a slobbery gulping noise, which possibly meant “Anything you say, boss!”
    More than twenty people, Mau thought as the rain dripped off his chin like tears. It wasn’t enough, if the Raiders came. Not enough to fight, but too many to hide. And certainly enough for a few good dinners for the people-eaters….
    No one had seen the Raiders. They were coming from island to island, people said, but it was always a rumor. On the other hand, if you had seen the Raiders, then they had seen you….
    There was a slight grayness to the air now, not really light but the ghost of it. It would get stronger, and the sun would come up and maybe the horizon would be black with canoes, and maybe it wouldn’t.
    Inside Mau’s head there was one bright memory. There was the ghost girl, looking silly in the grass skirt, and there was him, looking even sillier in the trousers, and everyone was laughing, even the Unknown Woman, and everything had been…right.
    And then there had been all these new people, milling around and worried and ill and hungry. Some of them were not even sure where they’d ended up, and all of them were scared.
    They were a rabble, according to the Grandfathers. They were the people the wave had not swallowed. Why? Not even they knew. Maybe they had held on to a tree while others had been swept away, or had been on higher ground, or at sea, like Mau.
    Those afloat had gone back to people and villages that weren’t there, and had scavenged what they could and set out to find other people. They’d followed the current, and had met up, and had become a kind of floating village—but one of children without parents, parents without children, wives